With the technological revolution in these days, different types of personal computers (PCs), such as desktop type, tower type, notebook type or the like, have been developed and commercially available in the marketplace. Of these PCs, a notebook PC has been designed and manufactured to have a smaller size and a lighter weight, thereby to improve its mobility and portability.
Accordingly, in order to implement the aforesaid mobility/portability of a notebook PC as its features, it is mandatory to reduce the whole size and weight thereof. Also, since a notebook PC is a battery-operated device, it is required to reduce the overall power consumption, thereby to lengthen the continuously operable time after charging a battery. Hitherto, these features have been conventionally implemented by removing unnecessary functions from a desktop PC or a tower PC for selecting those functions to be installed on a notebook PC.
By way of example, some notebook PCs have had a limitation in that either a hard disk drive (HDD) or a floppy disk drive (FDD) can be selectively contained in its system unit as an internal drive for use therein. Namely, such a notebook PC is provided with a bay that is designed to contain either one of the HDD and FDD alone in its system unit. In another example, two different products, each having an internal HDD and an internal FDD respectively, are manufactured so that a user may select/purchase either one of these products.
Obviously, when a user carries a notebook PC for using it outside, there is no substantial problem of the prior approaches if either an HDD or an FDD is available to the user. However, when such a notebook PC is used in an office, its user may occasionally wish to use both of the HDD and FDD simultaneously. Also, the substantial increase of different products not only leads to the increase of costs but also an undesirable situation that prevents a user from upgrading his/her notebook PC during its use.
In FIG. 5, there is shown a prior solution to these problems. Shown in FIG. 5 is a method of connecting an internal FDD unit 520 that has been generally used in a conventional notebook PC. An internal bay 530 of the notebook PC is capable of selectively containing an internal storage device such as an HDD or an FDD. When the internal bay 530 is presently in use by another internal device such as an HDD, said FDD unit 520 that can be contained in the internal bay 530 may be externally attached (connected) to the notebook PC for use as its external device.
However, in such a case, it has been unable to directly attach FDD unit 520 to the notebook PC, since a connector 522 of FDD unit 520 and a connector 412 of a cable 410 for external attachment have different interfaces each other. Thus, it has been customarily required to provide an attachment means 510 for connecting the interface of the connector 522 to the cable 410 for external attachment. In other words, it is possible to externally attach FDD unit 520 to the notebook PC only when the attachment means 510 is so mounted as to embrace FDD unit 520. A connector 414 at another end of the cable 410 for external attachment is connected to a connector 420 of the notebook PC.
Another alternative approach for external attachment would be to newly design and manufacture a cable 530, as shown at a lower left portion of FIG. 5, which fits an connector 522 for internal attachment. However, such an approach is deemed disadvantageous in that there would be involved as much cost and time as the case of using said attachment means 510.
On the other hand, with respect to another type of a conventional notebook PC that has not any internal FDD, a dedicated FDD unit for external attachment (not shown) and its associated cable 410 have been widely available in the marketplace. In other words, because such a cable 410 for external attachment is readily obtainable at a lower price, there will be no substantial need to use said attachment means 510.
In Japanese Patent Publications H4-55918 and H4-55919, there is disclosed a technique for selectively containing either one of HDD and FDD in a portable type personal computer as its internal drive. However, in this technique, a dedicated housing for an HDD has to be used whenever an HDD is contained in the personal computer, whereas a dedicated housing for an FDD has to be used whenever an FDD is contained in the personal computer. While this technique enables to selectively change either one of HDD and FDD to the other at a factory level, it has a drawback that it does not allow a user to select an appropriate drive to be contained at one time or another. Besides, this technique has another drawback that a removable tray is additionally required for containing an HDD in the personal computer.
In another Japanese Patent Publication H3-142771, there is disclosed a similar technique for selectively containing either one of HDD and FDD in a portable type personal computer as its internal drive. However, this technique has a drawback that, in case of externally attaching an FDD to the personal computer, another HDD must be contained therein.
It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide a peripheral device and a computer system, which are arranged to allow both of external and internal attachments of the peripheral device to the computer system. In case of the external attachment, this peripheral device is ideally attached to the computer system in a manner compatible with the conventional attachment method and does not require any dedicated attachment means.
It is another object of this invention to provide a computer system adapted for containing a plurality of different peripheral devices, which has a high degree of freedom for configuring these peripheral devices.
It is another object of this invention to provide a peripheral device and a computer system, which are arranged to allow both of external and internal attachments of the peripheral device to the computer system. In case of the external attachment, this peripheral device can be attached to the computer system in a manner compatible with the conventional attachment method by making use of an inexpensive and readily obtainable cable.